Unearned Luck

On May 30, 2012, Mr. Roger Ebert posted a review  of the movie " For Greater Glory ," a post that is less a review of the movie and more a view into Mr. Ebert's own prejudices.  In the review, Mr. Ebert confesses knowing nothing about the Cristeros War  fought in Mexico from 1926 to 1929.  Asking a "close Mexican-American friend, well-informed in Mexican history," but who was totally ignorant of the Cristeros War, was the extent of Mr. Ebert's background research.  Perhaps, Mr. Ebert could not find his Wikipedia bookmark.  Mr. Ebert's ignorance of the history of the Cristeros War, the history of the Catholic Church in Mexico and of Catholicism and his prejudice against the Catholic Church makes an intelligent review of the movie impossible, yet he soldiered on. Mr. Ebert begins his review of the movie by misrepresenting the history he doesn't know in the very first sentence.  The Cristeros War was not a war that "Mexico fought over the freedom...

While Catholics in the United States were the primary audience of my most recent post, Work and Pray , please know that it is directed against neither non-Catholic Christians nor non-Christians.  In a way, Work and Pray  may be directed more at non-Catholic and non-Christian audiences, because whatever liberties you may enjoy and cherish will disappear quickly upon the elimination of the Catholic Church from the public square.  While some of you may not want the Church's religious beliefs within 500 yards of "your" constitution, it is necessary to understand to what extent the Church guards the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.  Because the Church is over two thousand years old and is universal, the Church understands how dangerous an unchecked, tyrannically-inclined government can be to everyone's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, rights that do include religious freedom.  The Church, therefore, has been diligent ov...

As he entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, beseeching him and saying, "Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, in terrible distress."...And to the centurion Jesus said, "Go; be it done for you as you have believed ."  And the servant was healed at that very moment.     -St. Matthew 8:5-13 And as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, "Have mercy on us, Son of David."  When he entered the house, the blind men came to him; and Jesus said to them, "Do you believe that I am able to do this?"  They said to him, "Yes, Lord."  Then he touched their eyes, saying, " According to your faith be it done to you."  And their eyes were opened.     -St. Matthew 9:27-30 And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.    -St. Matthew 13:58 This weekend I saw two movies, "For Greater Glory" and "The Perfect Game," that have set me to thinking mo...

The HHS mandate is about curtailing religious freedom.  More specifically, this current administration seems most interested in curtailing the Church's evangelization efforts and acquiring for itself a nation-wide health care network. With the HHS mandate, the current administration and its adherents are revealing that they know as well as we do that the separation of Church and State is a fallacy.  As long as the Church exists, it will always be involved in evangelizing the State and its citizenry.  The Church, or more broadly, religion cannot be separated from the State and in the history of the world, there are very few, if any, examples of such a separation.  To effect a separation requires the elimination of the Church. Over these two and a third centuries the Church has worked hard to appease the State in the hopes that the State will allow her to maintain her tax exempt status.  Appeasement has taken many forms from carefully wording homilies and sta...